This disclosure relates generally to signal detection, and more particular to detecting signals received in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with a soft demodulation scheme using hard-decision candidate selection.
With the continuing demand for higher-speed digital communications systems and higher-density digital storage systems, various techniques have been applied to increase the capacity of these systems. However, even with high-capacity communications and storage media, their respective bandwidths and densities are still limited. Therefore, MIMO systems are often used to fully exploit the capabilities of these systems. In particular, increasing the dimensions of these systems enables higher throughput and reliability, as more information can be conveyed without increasing the bandwidth of such systems.
However, the efficiency gained by MIMO systems comes at the expense of a complex receiver design. In particular, a MIMO receiver may obtain a plurality of signals from its multiple receiver inputs, where each signal includes information from each of the multiple transmitter outputs. From all of this jumbled information, a MIMO detector can attempt to recover the independent information transmitted from each of the various transmitter outputs. Thus, this information recovery process may require some tradeoff between receiver complexity and performance.